It was “The Palatine (in the ’Dark Ages’),”
by Willa Sibert Cather, reprinted from McClure’s.
The reader will understand better than I can express
why these lofty opening stanzas appealed to Mark Twain:

ThePalatine

“Have you been with
the King to Rome,
Brother, big brother?”
“I’ve been there and I’ve
come home,
Back to your play, little brother.”

“Oh, how high is Caesar’s
house,
Brother, big brother?”
“Goats about the doorways browse;
Night-hawks nest in the burnt roof-tree,
Home of the wild bird and home of the
bee.
A thousand chambers of marble lie
Wide to the sun and the wind and the
sky.
Poppies we find amongst our wheat
Grow on Caesar’s banquet seat.
Cattle crop and neatherds drowse
On the floors of Caesar’s house.”

“But what has become
of Caesar’s gold,
Brother, big brother?”
“The times are bad and the world
is old
—­Who knows the where of the
Caesar’s gold?
Night comes black on the Caesar’s
hill;
The wells are deep and the tales are
ill.
Fireflies gleam in the damp and mold,
All that is left of the Caesar’s
gold.
Back to your play, little brother.”

Farther along in our journey he handed me the paper
again, pointing to these lines of Kipling:

How is it not good for the Christian’s
health
To hurry the Aryan brown,
For the Christian riles and the Aryan smiles,
And he weareth the Christian down;
And the end of the fight is a tombstone
white
And the name of the late deceased:
And the epitaph drear: “A fool
lies here
Who tried to hustle the East.”

“I could stand any amount of that,” he
said, and presently: “Life is too long
and too short. Too long for the weariness of it;
too short for the work to be done. At the very
most, the average mind can only master a few languages
and a little history.”

I said: “Still, we need not worry.
If death ends all it does not matter; and if life
is eternal there will be time enough.”

“Yes,” he assented, rather grimly, “that
optimism of yours is always ready to turn hell’s
back yard into a playground.”

I said that, old as I was, I had taken up the study
of French, and mentioned Bayard Taylor’s having
begun Greek at fifty, expecting to need it in heaven.